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“Simply” Reunification

There has been a change of government in Lugansk. Kornet, Plotnitskiy.
I have nothing to say. Everyone is asking my opinion, but I am a little person, can I really influence anything?
But I will write about something that perhaps is not related to these events, but which bothers me personally. If there is a reunification, it would be a betrayal of the people of the Donbass.
Sometime ago I was told that “it will be better if they simply reunify, then it will all end.” You know, this is not even funny, because it’s obvious this reunification will not “simply” happen. Only on Facebook and on Ukraine Channel 1 things will be fine.
Why?
After three years of this, about every other family has ties to the Novorossia militia. Every other family has a “regime supporter”, people whom Kiev considers “criminal authorities”–officials, militia, firefighters, doctors, courts, village councils, utilities workers, etc. All of these people are working for the “regime” and from Kiev’s point of view they are “traitors” and are subject to being tried for “terrorism” and “separatism.” As do their relatives. Simple math–two thirds of the population would have to be arrested. Of course, they wouldn’t do that, that would be genocide, since, to the envy of Russia, Ukraine has become Europe. One has to save face, this is not Somalia after all. Therefore the “purification” will be more selective. A few public floggings, the rest will be taken care of behind the scenes. People will be disappeared and nobody will know anything about them. They don’t have Facebook accounts and therefore nobody will raise a stink.

The media will report as they do from Slavyansk: “everyone is happy and content.” Joyful liberal bloggers will come, ask people on the street, and will hear everything is wonderful.
But people will sit and pray, hoping they will be spared. How can it be otherwise, if right now people in Severodonetsk, Lisichansk, Rubezhnoye, and other cities close to the front people are afraid that they might be even indirectly linked to those who organized referendum. Because they’ll be dealt with harshly. Do you know how many people I know personally who fled to Russia in the last two years? Who were held in cellars? Who were afraid because they have relatives in LPR and DPR? People are being pressured, forced to betray others. How many stories like that are there? How many people whom we helped and who asked us not to publish their photos because they have relatives on the “other side” and have to keep quiet about it? This is the contemporary reality of these regions at war on Ukraine’s territory. One shouldn’t avert one’s gaze, one must always remember, and take responsibility, when one speaks of “simple reunification.” Only cats are born “simply.”
But even that’s not the whole truth.
There is also a psychological dimension. Those who fled the shelling has the view “anything but war”, “may it all end soon”. One can readily understand them.
But they didn’t sit in the cellars, wondering whether their house will survive the next bombardment. Whether their neighbors are alive or not. They don’t know what it means to come out of shelter for a couple of minutes to wash and to see a shell hit annihilate a neighboring stairwell. But miraculously leave you alive. They don’t know what it’s like to be a woman with a corpse of your husband in your apartment for two weeks because there is nobody to carry him out. The shelling is so intense. When they do come, they can only bury him next to the house. In the middle of the city. Please read these stories on this blog. There are many of them.
I talked to dozens, hundreds of people who sat in the cellars back in ’14 in Pervomaysk and Lugansk. Who know what it means to have “your new president” drop bombs on you from aircraft and then deny that fact before the whole world. Even now Poroshenko is denying the June 2, 2014 aerial bombardment of Lugansk. The whole city saw how aerial bombs were hitting the city. The whole city saw it but these cowards can’t admit it.
And nearly none of these people want reunification.

I wrote above I had nothing to say. Well, that wasn’t totally true.
I do have something.
That “something” I’ve been monotonously saying for the last three years. The quiet and boring story of the people of the Donbass.
Here’s Raisa Vladimirovna who’s now 86 years old. Who couldn’t walk and had no ability to escape the shelling. She’s from Pervomaysk. She spent the whole war in her home.

We recently brought aid for her and the daughter. The grandmother cried when we arrived.
From the pain of her current condition, from all she’s been through.
Her leg was amputated in ’16. There was blood puddling, the leg couldn’t be saved.
She stopped walking even earlier. But there would have been no amputation if it weren’t for ’14-’15.
Raisa Vladimirovna simply cried. Her daughter only said “when will they leave us alone?”